India Retail News.

Indian footwear Retailer Bata India Ltd has embarked upon a new retail strategy along with the dynamics of the market. We are covering the same in Two Parts.

Bata's revamped business strategy is aligned towards addressing a larger pie, introducing newer product lines and a resurgent brand on the front-end and curtailing costs at the back end. The front end strategy is focused on higher footfalls, higher value retailing, driven by a new-look store layout and a resurgent brand and back-end strategy of process rationalization in form of raw material cost and manpower cost reduction.

Some of the measures taken by the company under Mr. Sinha's chairmanship [Former CEO of Pepsico India and South Asia] are as follows,

• Plans to add 70 stores per year for next 3 yrs. Extension of shopping hours and modernization of old stores. All this led to presence of Bata Stores near the consumer both in terms of location and time, Swanky international looks will attract higher footfalls
• Reposition brand 'Bata' - High brand recall for consumer led to higher footfalls and better
  conversions
• Target new market (ladies and kids) - Filling the missing 45% pie of footwear market
• Improving shoe line - Launching international brands, focus on style will attract new young customer class

Branding is very essential in the footwear retail business as 68% of Indians want to BUY Branded Footwear. In our next post, we will analyze the outcome of this transformation stratgey over the past couple of years.